EMS Racing continued their brilliant start to the 2005 European Superstock Championship with an impressive qualifying performance at the historic Monza circuit in Northern Italy. Riding the EMS Racing Suzuki GSXR-1000, Craig Coxhell scorched to sixth position to secure a second row start for Sundays 11 lap race.

It was Craig’s first visit to Monza and he was at an even bigger disadvantage than he was at Valencia in terms of knowing the circuit. The reason for this was that there was a round of the Italian Superbike Championship at the track last week, which gave his Italian rivals a big advantage in terms of track time. However that didn’t faze the former Australian Superbike Champion and he soon got dialled in to the ultra fast circuit.

During the two practice and qualifying sessions the team worked hard to improve the set-up of the EMS Racing Suzuki GSXR-1000. Due to the combination of long fast straights leading in to slow chicanes, the team’s focus was on the front end of the bike and the brakes. After experiencing a number of problems early on the team were able to make positive changes which allowed Craig to up the pace and run with the leaders.

In the final session, Craig held eighth spot, but with just minutes to go he upped the pace even further in search of a front row start. With just a couple of corners left to go, Craig was up to third position, but as he exited the second chicane he lost rear wheel grip and was nearly high sided off the bike, which lost him valuable time and he dropped to sixth.

“I’m still not used to the track so I’m making some mistakes when I push hard. I’m finding the last chicane really difficult and out of ten laps I’m probably only getting it right once. We had a lot of problems to start with on the forks and brakes, but we’ve got them sorted. The only problem is that now we’re able to go faster I’ve run into some other issues with the rear of the bike. If we can get these problems sorted in warm-up then we should be able to challenge for the win because I’m doing good lap times even though I’m making mistakes. If we can stay out of trouble during the first couple of laps then we should be OK.” said Craig.